102 migrants, including two pregnant women and a seven-month-old baby, were disembarked from the Aita Mari rescue ship at the Sicilian port of Augusta on Monday. They had all been rescued on Friday in the Mediterranean Sea.
Adama* contacted InfoMigrants to talk about what he experienced on arrival in Romania. Beaten and humiliated by Romanian police after crossing the border from Serbia, the 36-year-old Malian is still traumatized by the violence he suffered.
Ever since Laye Traoré, a young apprentice baker from Guinea, was saved from deportation after his boss staged a hunger strike, the demands to help other young migrant workers stay in France have multiplied. Laye has become a symbol for the struggles many unaccompanied minors in France face after turning 18.
After mounting pressure from rights group, France's highest court on Thursday lifted a termporary freeze on family reunification visas for spouses and children of non-European foreigners living in France. The government had imposed the freeze in March 2020 as a way to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Although authorities in the northern French port city of Calais last week activated its "Great Cold Plan" to shield homeless migrants from an approaching winter storm, hundreds of migrants were still left out in the snow. In the neighbouring town of Grande Synthe, the situation was even worse for the nearly 500 migrants living in the Puythouck forest camp.
InfoMigrants has learnt that one of the victims in Tuesday's shipwreck off Libya had been in contact with us back in March. At least 43 people died in the accident. Souleymane came from Guinea and had been in Libya for the last three years. This was his fourth attempt to cross the Mediterranean.
A fake Facebook page claiming to be from the French Office of Immigration and Integration is asking people for money in exchange for advice. According to the director of the Ofii, this kind of scam is commonplace.
More than 2,000 people live in the make-shift migrant camp in Saint-Denis, on the northern fringe of Paris. After France was ordered into lockdown last week, the already tense climate in the overcrowded camp has become near explosive.
Around 40 undocumented migrants who worked for the French delivery service Stuart during the coronavirus lockdown were dismissed after the restrictions were eased. While the company says it’s complying with the law, the workers claim Stuart knew it was employing undocumented foreigners.
Following the October 16 beheading of a French schoolteacher by a Chechen refugee in the Parisian suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, several media reports and statements by politicians have featured factually inaccurate or false information concerning the right to asylum in France. InfoMigrants examined and fact-checked these statements.
In Belgium, migrants have been strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic -- not only did they face difficulties in filing their asylum applications, the government has also imposed stricter regulations for accessing accommodation. Conditions for migrants have become extremely precarious, says the director of the NGO Ciré.
France has made the fight against domestic violence a priority but activists say the state has overlooked undocumented migrant women who are victims of domestic violence. Although laws have been enacted in recent years, they have failed to protect women deprived of gender and residency rights, they argue.